


Ven Ikh Bin Pulitzer - Dialogue of a New York Ganef

by CaptainLordAuditor



Series: New Americana [9]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Class Differences, Missing Scene, Multi, Newsie Politics, canon is a garbage can which i have set on fire to warm myself on cold winter days, implied period accurate gay culture AND period accurate homophobia, mentions of gang stuff i guess???, mostly - Freeform, our boys are CRIMINALS!, theres really subtle jatherine in here but its so subtle im not tagging it, very unsure bisexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 02:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18437123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLordAuditor/pseuds/CaptainLordAuditor
Summary: "I looked it up by the way; the sixth largest city in the world is Vienna.”





	Ven Ikh Bin Pulitzer - Dialogue of a New York Ganef

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Inspired by a post on tumblr that pointed out that the sixth largest city in the world in 1899 was, in fact, Vienna, not Brooklyn.

The evening was as quiet as Manhattan got, the heat making the entire city muggy, and it got muggier and quieter as they walked. This was a part of the city Jack rarely got to; he’d mostly seen it from the trolleys he hopped while working. It was nice, respectable by most standards of the word. Everyone here had a door and a lock, and probably both hot and cold water, too. 

It had been a long time since he’d walked a pretty girl home. It felt alien, and made Jack feel slightly guilty. When he’d offered, after she’d gone to work and then come back in the evening to talk to Jack, Race had given him a  _ look  _ and rolled his eyes. 

Katherine-  _ Miss Plumber  _ \- was nice, and pretty, and Jack was fairly sure Davey didn’t like him that much, anyway, so it was probably best to try to get over what he was feeling, or at least act like he was. Sure, he’d spent a month extolling the virtues and beauty of the boy who lived in the building Jack slept on and spoke four languages, never mind the two weeks of messing around they’d had. 

But Jack was pretty sure those two weeks, and what they’d been doing during them, didn’t mean anything to Davey except maybe repayment. Race was teasing Jack about it, calling him a wolf and a Greek, talking about  _ baby’s first punk _ , and Jack tried to hide it but he hated it. If Davey was a punk, then what did that say about Jack? Jack didn’t want anyone to think that way,  _ especially  _ Davey. 

“What did you mean earlier?” K -  _ Miss Plumber’s _ voice startled him out of his thoughts. 

“Hmm?”

“When you talked about Brooklyn. I looked it up by the way; the sixth largest city in the world is Vienna.”

Jack paused, gears in his head whirring as he tried to find a way to explain newsie politics to this respectable girl with an office job. 

“You said if you’ve got Brooklyn, you’ve hit the mother lode,” she reminded him, mistaking his hesitation. 

“Yeah, I knows what I said,” he says quickly. “Only it ain’t just people or land what makes a big city, see?” He can spin this yarn. “There’s other things, too. It’s not about how many people there is in it, it’s how dense cramped they is, right? Manhattan, we’s big, but we got Central Park. And come weekends, Queens and ‘Hatten drains out to Coney and Brighton, see?”

“Most newspapers don’t print on Sundays,” Miss Plumber pointed out. 

Jack shrugged. “Sure they doesn’t. But all the Yid ones does. And there’s always more jobs to be had when it’s crowded. More things folks wants done.”

“Most people would would say crowding makes work harder to get.”

He snorted. “Not nobody that works on the street!” He stopped himself, but it was too late. 

Miss Plumber stopped walking. “You’re talking about crime.”

Jack wet his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”

She stared at him, and Jack was suddenly acutely aware of what he’d done, and remembered how he’d stuffed the red handkerchief he wore in place of a tie into his pocket when they’d first met, at Medda’s no less. Katherine shouldn’t know what it meant, at her station, as a respectable lady, but if she’d been reviewing in the Bowery long enough she’d probably picked up a few things.

If she reviewed the Bowery, she probably didn’t mind. As far as she - and Jack - were concerned, the tie and its associations were the least of the boys’ crimes.

“Is it true, then, what people say about them?” her eyes were wider and her brow was furrowed. Jack wasn’t sure if she was more scared or intrigued.

He pulled back. “Depends what it is people say.”

“That they’re thieves, mostly. That they’ll grow up to be gangsters and murderers or conmen.”

Jack let out a breath he was holding quietly. “Ain’t got nothing else for us to do.”

“Nothing?” The shock in her voice was as much a reminder of what world she was from as her words. 

Jack shrugged. “My older brother’s a prizefighter,” he offered. His older brother had also taught him the basics of lying and pickpocketing, along with English and selling, and would probably end up with the gang that was setting his fights up. 

“And you’ll do the same, or be a thief?” Miss Plumber asked. “You’re not- I don’t know- you’re not selling papers to pay your way through art school?”

When she said that, Jack knew that she wasn’t like other girls he knew, that despite the cheap but respectable boarding house she lived in, despite the low job as a critic in the Bowery, Miss Plumber was a real lady who couldn’t even conceive of the world the boys had spent their lives in. It was no wonder she’d asked about their criminal habits. Jack snorted, which turned into a long laugh. He leaned against a street lamp to support himself as the sound burst forth into the night air. “Art school?” He managed at last. “You kidding me?”

“You’re an artist. You have real talent.” She reached into her bag and - good God - pulled out the newspaper from three days ago that Jack had covered in sketches of Medda, the girls, and people he saw around the theatre - including Miss Plumber. He couldn’t believe she’d found it, let alone kept it. “You should be inside the paper illustrating it, not outside hawking it.”

He also had a talent for getting into trouble in place of the boys, for finding ways to keep them, for the most part, on what folks considered the right side of the law, and keeping them out of jail when he couldn’t do that. He had a talent for sweet talking the girls into helping him, and spending the money he could have been saving for that commune out west on his brothers, and thinking of ways to get them all out there and buy land even though he knew he couldn’t and half of them didn’t want that anyway. “Yeah. But that ain’t what I want.”


End file.
